Laying in the gutter / Looking at the stars

Fox News, Free Speech and Murder

2009-06-01T20:36:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot recently about the freedom of speech. I've been thinking about how that phrase has been used as a shield, ostensibly making it permissible to say any number of ridiculous, abhorrent, sometimes frightening things in the public forum. I'm a huge proponent of free speech. In fact it is (obviously) one of my favorite things. Right up there next to bright copper kettles.

But I have to say, from Miss California crying over her relatives giving their lives so she may spout bigotry and ignorance from a stage in her underpants, to the fascinating revelations (below) highlighting Fox News', if not complicity, than certainly cheerleading heading up to the murder of Dr. George Tiller, people are, at least figuratively, getting away with murder.

It seems to me that there's a common thread here. They're certainly right that we are all free in this country to say anything we like - any damn fool thing that pops into our minds we have the right to say. However, they seem to be laboring under the misconception that they need take no responsibility for it. I'm not so sure about that.

I can understand Miss California. She perhaps came to believe she was the only one with the right to free speech (beauty competitions will do things like that to you), and it came as a good galloping shock to learn that other people could say what they wanted too. And they said it about her! And it wasn't about her hair! And it wasn't nice! At the very least she was not malicious, and she in fact was speaking her mind...such as it is.

I'm not so sure we can give our dear old friends at Fox News the same pass. Not again. Not this time. Because really, I think the clips below make the case pretty damn strongly.

There are consequences to preaching hate and preaching violence. Sometimes those consequences are you don't make it past the talent competition. Sometimes the consequence is someone is shot to death on a warm spring morning in church. They say with great power comes great responsibility. I think the word power can often be used interchangeably with the word freedom.

I would just free speech this: In saying any damn fool thing you want, hard as it is to believe, there are people out there listening to what you say. Some people will even do what you say. And despite what you may think about the constitution giving you a fully blameless free-pass, the rest of us will, in fact, hold you accountable for what you say. And someday soon everyone is going get tired of your hate and your fear and incendiary free speech and they're just going listen to someone else.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Signs

2009-02-04T17:00:00.000-08:00

2008-12-04T10:56:00.000-08:00

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

JOIN THE IMPACT

2008-11-10T16:44:00.000-08:00

E Pluribus Unum

2008-11-04T13:44:00.000-08:00

The day broke with a palatable sense of renewal. It had rained some time in the early morning before I woke up and everything was still wet. But the sun was streaming though the trees and glinting off the droplets hanging from the leaf tips. All the streets were clean and the air was clear. Ludicrously, it actually felt like the world had been reborn.

The polling lines were longer than I’ve ever seen them, winding from the outside lawn into the middle school theatre all the way down to the orchestra of the stage. The sense of quiet, pent up anticipation rolled around the crowd like a roulette ball. Throngs of fourth graders politely requested interviews with the voters and slowly scratched responses onto a single sheet of white paper with their # 2 pencils. “Why is this election different from others?” “What issue do you care about most and why?” Though obviously trying to hold back enthusiasm, voters’ answers came so furiously that had the students had 20 years experience taking shorthand they might have kept up. The poor kids never had a chance.

One way or the other this day already feels monumental. Will the state and the country choose to move boldly into the future forsaking archaic prejudices? The future is so close it's like looking at the sun. It could be tomorrow. One more dawn. Exhilarating as it is terrifying. It’s humbling to be on the verge of such possibility. We as people can be so small, but as a people we can be immense. It’s incredible to think this could be the real thing.

Don't Vote

2008-10-30T21:47:00.000-07:00

What the Pfuck?

2008-10-21T17:34:00.001-07:00

...Far, Far From the Tree: Massive Voter Suppression and Illegal Purging

2008-10-16T18:06:00.000-07:00

In politics even the appearance of impropriety can apparently be mistaken for actual impropriety. It is difficult to think of any time in which that concept has been more clearly demonstrated than during this election season. In the debate last night as well as in uncounted ads John McCain has accused Barack Obama of appearing inappropriate. Several times McCain made the suggestion that “we” need to know the full extent of Obama’s connection to Bill Ayres and ACORN, as if we don’t already.

So, do we? Really? No we don’t. The record is clear, it’s been clear on Ayres for a long time and his connection to ACORN is even more innocuous and just as public.

ACORN ostensibly had a number of employees who were paid to gather voter registration and turned in false names. This does NOT constitute voter fraud. To use a common example, even if Mickey Mouse is registered to vote, he’s not going to show up and cast a ballot. What’s more, ACORN is only being attacked for this affair because they did their jobs and openly reported to the FEC when any type of issue arose from the canvassing. Invalid voter registration results in invalid registration, NOT voter fraud.

Justin Rood of ABC News reports: “’There's no evidence that any of these invalid registrations lead to any invalid votes,’ said David Becker, project director of the "Make Voting Work" initiative for the Pew Charitable Trusts. Becker should know: he was a lawyer for the Bush administration until 2005, in the Justice Department's voting rights section, which was part of the administration's aggressive anti-vote-fraud effort.”

So this is a fake scandal. John McCain had the audacity to go on television last night make the declaration: (ACORN) “is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.”

I sure hope the fabric of our democracy is resilient enough to withstand Mickey Mouse not voting for anybody. This assertion is so extreme in its deceit it’s practically obscene. Which is exactly why it’s brilliant and oh so classically Roveian.

It doesn’t take an Olympic poll-vaulter leap to suspect that this accusation has nothing to do with Barack Obama and nothing to do with ACORN. It is in fact a smoke screen for massive Republican voter suppression and illegal purging of registration lists by states.

Classic Roveian tactics. Accuse the other side of doing exactly what you’re doing. Manufacture weaknesses for the opposition so that:

Everyone’s too focused on a nonsense issue to notice what you’re doing.

If you’re ever caught doing the thing you accused the opposition of, it doesn’t seem so bad because we’ve heard it before and it’s just a sad sign of the times, and really we associate it first with the opposition anyway.

If the opposition wins you have a tool to contest the vote or at the very lest besmirch the results as invalid or stolen.

Incidentally John McCain has his own innocuous association with ACORN, where he loved them up on a number of occasions. With the world economy coming down around our ears, healthcare in a continuing crisis and the war in Iraq bleeding this country of cash but more importantly of actual blood, this of course only emphasizes what is already too clear. What a sad desperate hypocrite he has become and why the choice is no choice at all.

Hello, I'm No On Prop 8

2008-10-16T13:24:00.001-07:00

Obama Fundraising Smear

2008-10-15T13:31:00.000-07:00

If we are lucky we all have our own old and abiding family political discord. Personally, I think it’s what makes Christmas dinner worth the fuss. I wrote the following in response to an email I received stemming from my own old and abiding family political discord. We’re all always trying to one up each other. I don't intend to make a habit of responding nor posting my responses to bullshit right wing propaganda. First, I think it's generally unhelpful to engage the fringe because that’s what they eat, and second it's usually not very interesting. Sometimes though it seems one is unable to help oneself, and this I thought bore at the very least some entertainment value.

This is the return volley to a shot came in the form of two attached articles one purportedly by Maureen Dowd and one by Kenneth R. Timmerman which break the "news" that the Obama campaign has received innumerable campaign contributions from Saudi Arabia, Iran and North Korea. Now don't laugh it hasn't even started yet.

Article 1

Article 2

------------------------

These articles about Barack Obama's fundraising are not true. To find out why please see the following:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/donations.asp

The first clue is the by line. I like Maureen Dowd quite a bit but idea that she'd write an article this critical of Obama does indeed give one pause. She may be a journalist in that she's published in newspapers, but she's a journalist more akin to the Fox News variety and not the Bill Moyers variety and, well, she just swings the other way.

That said, she can be a mighty entertaining source as evidenced by the following link where she reprints a piece written by Aaron Sorkin a few weeks ago. This, like the pieces about Iran funding the Obama campaign, is also a work of fiction, though in my opinion it has a better arc and payoff at the end, especially if you're a big West Wing fan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/opinion/21dowd-sorkin.html

The article by Kenneth R. Timmerman has, so far as I can tell, been published and reprinted on a number of right-wing blogs and comments pages, but not a single reputable news organization seems to have carried it. Being myself not an investigative journalist I can only suppose why that might be.

A brief peruse through the internets reveals Kenneth R. Timmerman, fair and balanced journalist and author of such fare as "The French Betrayal of America", "Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran" and "Shadow Warriors: The Untold Story of Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of Surrender". However, we all remember him from his big hit, written coincidentally 7 years ago today on October 15th, 2002: "How Saddam got weapons of mass destruction: Saddam Hussein's war machine is being built systematically to strike at the U.S. with new nuclear, biological and chemical weapons designed to kill millions". So, at the very least we can all thank him for that.

Helpful Hint: If you purchase "The French Betrayal of America" AND Traitors, Saboteurs, and Party of Surrender" at the same time you're eligible for Free Super Saver Shipping from Amazon.

Incidentally, even if this were true, if really the worst we can say about Obama is that his campaign staffers have been the unwitting victims of internet hackers, well, he's connecting with the common man there. I been in that boat man, I can tell you! But again, it isn't true, is it.

http://fightthesmears.com/

The Last Laugh

2008-10-13T10:27:00.000-07:00

Sign of the Times

2008-10-07T21:23:00.001-07:00

McCain's Brain's Associations

2008-10-07T14:15:00.000-07:00

McCain looks a little ashamed of himself at the moment. Behind the canned smiles and the rhetoric, he knows what he’s doing. He knows that he’s wiping his shoes on every principle he’s ever believed in or stood for with regard to how he always has said campaigns ought to be run. Supporters and campaign alike, the desperation is almost tangible. They’re wounded, frightened and still furious.

Palin, it must be noted, does not look ashamed; she’s doing God’s work, no need for irksome morals. Like Scarlet O’Hara, she’ll think about it tomorrow.

That the Bush administration has been a calamity approaching the biblical is by now clear to even the staunchest intelligent republican. They’ve played into Al Qaeda’s hands by plunging our treasure and blood into the quicksand of Iraq. 9/11 wasn’t an attack on our freedom; it was an attack on our economy. Al Qaeda: 1 / 401k: 0. Privacy rights, citizen’s rights, human rights all trounced. A major American city lost. Justice obstructed. Torture. Lies, lies, and more lies, costing thousands of American lives.

Now that the Bush catastrophe has begun to cost people actual money, they’ve sat up and taken notice. They seem to be abandoning McCain.

So, what’s left? With the prospect of actually losing, and the rational no longer working, the higher-layer functions of the campaign’s brain have maxed out and been peeled away and cast aside. What’s left is the Crocodile o Best Beloved; ancient, thoughtless, reactionary, and capable of doing -- saying anything to survive.

Witness the latest eruption of bile from the McCain/Palin ticket attempting to tie Obama to Bill Ayers actions during the Vietnam War, when incidentally Obama was around 8 years old. McCain left the audience to cast the verdict itself, “Ayers was once a terrorist thus, Obama is a terrorist”. The conspicuous logical fallacy notwithstanding, predictably the audience ate it up and asked for seconds, calling out “Terrorist!”, “Treason!” and most ominously “Kill him”. Obama and Ayres both served on the board of an Anti-Poverty Philanthropic foundation. Sentence: Death.

Similarly, Gov. Palin’s remarks blaming the “gotcha” media for her abysmal performance in softball interviews, which were in format more personality pieces, evidently drew the ire of her rally attendees. Dana Milbank: “Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, ‘Sit down, boy.’”

At long last the campaign is rousing a bloodthirsty mob from the stinking bowels of the rankest swamp in this mostly great country to make their last desperate stand. Though I really can’t conceive of how, if for anyone the choice has heretofore been unclear, I hope this racks it into tight focus. And as long as we're making associations, the choice is not between which of the candidates you support, it is between which of the supporters you are going to be.